Tag: BiLingo

If we believe certain politicians in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, then Russia controls cyberspace. Vlad the Influencer is dabbling here, sticking his oar in there, getting Trump elected in the USA and boosting support for all manner of other candidates. It do make ew think.

Or maybe not . . . seeing as those who tell us these things are politicians and journalists, two sub-species whose members, in the affections of the public, come somewhere below Honest John down his auto ‘showroom’ behind the abattoir. In other words, lying bastards.

Another reason it all falls down is because we are asked to believe that those making these claims against Mr Putin – and the countries these accusers represent – have never themselves tried to influence events outside of their own borders, ever. So it’s not just lies, it’s rank hypocrisy.

The truth is that almost every country tries to influence events outside its borders. With smaller countries it may be no more than an irredentist squabble with a neighbour, but when we come to the big players, the scope becomes global. The bigger the stage, the bigger the lie: invasion becomes ‘humanitarian intervention’ and regime change is ‘restoring democracy’ (often to countries that have never known democracy!).

Now if larger countries are prepared to destabilise or invade other countries in their national interest then it stands to reason that they won’t hesitate to defend themselves from what they perceive to be internal threats.

With the UK this has taken many forms in recent decades. For example, in the 1980s, under Margaret Thatcher, we saw the naked power of the state used to provoke and then crush the National Union of Mineworkers. In Northern Ireland we saw detention without trial and a shoot to kill policy, but also the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British military and intelligence services co-operating with Loyalist terrorists.

Since the demise of the NUM and peace coming to the Six Counties the perceived threats to the UK have changed, and to meet those new threats we see modified responses. Though one constant among responses is propaganda, which has become more pervasive thanks to modern technology.

To the point where the propaganda offensive mounted to tarnish the SNP and ensure a No vote in the Scottish independence referendum reached a level of state-sponsored lying unknown in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

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BELIEVE US – BRITISH IS BEST!

Over the past ten or twelve years we have seen the rise of the SNP, the West has experienced Islamic terrorism (partly in response to military interventions in the Middle East), and to top it all we had the economic collapse of 2008.

After giving these matters a great deal of thought our masters decided that what was needed was a campaign to promote our shared Britishness, then, in response to the faltering economy, suggest that we’re all suffering equally. (Well I did warn you that these are lying bastards.)

Television companies played their part by going into overdrive. In the final year of the ruling Labour–Lib Dem coalition in the Scottish Parliament (to May 3, 2007) there were just 25 television programmes with ‘Britain’ or ‘British’ in the title. Between January 2013 and January 2014, with the SNP controlling the Scottish Parliament and the independence referendum looming, Islamic extremism increasing, and the economy up Shit Creek, the number of ‘Britain’ / ‘British’ programmes had rocketed to 516!

Another response appropriated the humble poppy. When I was young older people wore poppies in November because they had known men who had died in both world wars. It was sincere, and done without affectation or fanfare – and certainly not because they were trying to make a political point.

With our masters’ growing insecurity we saw the poppy transformed into a symbol of British nationalism and unity. This transformation reached its apogee of tastelessness and blatant, Sun-style ‘patriotism’ with the weeping window.

Like I say, it’s called propaganda. On the one hand, it’s intended to comfort (in troubled times) those who have bought in to the messages of state propaganda, and reinforce those messages with which the converted have been inculcated since childhood. On the other hand, this orgy of BritNat patriotism is also designed to win over those who are sceptical of that state propaganda. Finally, it targets by exclusion those who reject the BritNat message; seeking to intimidate and silence them.

Here in Wales, it seems the only way BritNats can express their loyalty to Britain is by rejecting and attacking anything distinctively Welsh, which will invariably be dismissed as ‘nationalism’ (and therefore divisive). For there seems to be no place in this ‘Britain’ for anything that is not English, other than Orange-Loyalism which it is hoped will help secure Scotland and part of Ireland. Proving, yet again, that ‘Britishness’ in Wales is just another word for Englishness.

Seeing as I’ve mentioned Orange-Loyalism some reading this may be tempted to remind me that the Democratic Unionist Party almost swept the (Protestant/Unionist) board in the recent general election. (True, and Sinn Féin did sweep the board on the other side.) But I would remind them that a) the DUP got just 36% of the vote and b) this was the first election ever in which Unionist parties and candidates failed to get a majority of the vote (49.2%). The writing would appear to be on the wall.

From Wikipedia, click to enlarge

When Sinn Féin becomes the largest party, and if the Six Counties experiences its Algeria moment, where will the hard-line Unionists embark for, or perhaps the question should be – where will the British state resettle them?

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THERE REALLY ARE ‘KEYBOARD WARRIORS’!

One casualty of this rise in intolerant Britishness has been the consensus Wales so recently enjoyed on certain issues such as the Welsh language. For in recent years, and perhaps especially in the past year or so, we have seen a tide of bigotry rise to challenge that consensus. And yet, when we analyse this tide it’s difficult to identify other than a few – very busy! – individuals, for so much of the rising hostility to the Welsh language is anonymous.

Though as I say, there are some who can be identified. How could I ignore the indefatigable Jacques Protic, bigot extraordinaire, who can turn any discussion, on any subject, into an attack on the Welsh language. Someone who got a mention in a recent post was Julian Ruck, who now has a platform for his hatred of things Welsh with a weekly column in the South Wales Evening Post. Another worth mentioning would be Michaela Beddows, leading light in the campaign against bilingual education in Llangennech.

Let me give a recent example. Here’s a ‘Welsh’ Assembly blog by Manon Antoniazzi about diversity and inclusion. It makes no mention of the Welsh language but still attracts ‘John Jones’. And Protic is supported here by the aforementioned Michaela Beddows of Llangennech, she who invited Ukip down and even flirted with the EDL.

But it goes beyond individuals and the SWEP, with the Western Mail living up to its Llais y Sais epithet when it ran a disgusting piece on the Llangennech school affair, suggesting that Cymdeithas yr Iaith members had gone around slashing tyres. It soon climbed down.

Articles supporting the anti-Welsh lobby in Llangennech also appeared in Private Eye and the Guardian. Private Eye, that anti-establishment publication forever laying into fat cats and corrupt politicians, and the Guardian, the voice of liberal reason. Who’d have thought they would be supporting a bunch of bigots in Llangennech?

In fact, the Guardian report caused great angst for those who believe that the people who attack us are simply ignorant of the situation, or else they’ve been misled; give them the facts and – being reasonable people – they will be won over. This is the apologist mindset that simply encourages further attacks.

The truth – that Plaid Cymru and others refuse to accept – is that when the bottom line is defending the Union, and dealing with any perceived threat to the cultural and other unity they believe must underpin the Union, there’s no difference between the English left, right and centre.

More recently I’ve noticed a change in the offensive of offensiveness. For a start, there seem to be more of the enemy and the attacks seem to take two main forms. They’re either an attack on Welsh or bilingual education, often suggesting that children taught in Welsh leave school unable to speak English! or else the criticism is over the amount of money ‘wasted’ on bilingual signs, etc., that could be spent on sick kiddies . . . puppies . . . fluffy kittens . . . (reaches for onion).

There is no doubt in my mind that many of those who have joined the fray in recent years, bemoaning the fact that children are dying of malnutrition and old people freezing to death because of the money wasted on the Welsh language, are working for the British state.

As this article from Private Eye earlier this year tells us, the British army now has its 77th Brigade, dedicated to ‘psy-ops’ (psychological operations). Predictably perhaps, 42% of the outfit will be reservists, but less predictably, the 77th will include “civvies with a penchant for tweeting and trolling on Facebook”. To Twitter and Facebook we can add assorted websites.

click to enlarge

“Civvies with a penchant for tweeting and trolling on Facebook”. How would that work, how would the 77th Brigade recruit such people? Do men in dark glasses turn up and say, ‘We’ve been following your career on Twitter and Facebook, we’re very impressed, you’re just the kind of anti-Welsh bigot we’re looking for – sign here!’

So the boys and girls down the local TA Centre, who used to train to repel the Ivans, may now be tweeting in support of Jacques and Jools. (Jacques and Jools may even be on the payroll!) And as the article tells us, the 77th Brigade joins existing units in the army, navy and the air force . . . and then there’s MI5 . . . and MI6 . . . and GCHQ. And of course, with smart phones and iPads, they can all work from home, or on a train – anywhere!

If that wasn’t bad enough then it’s made easy for them by certain websites which don’t ask those making comments or showing ‘Like’/’Dislike’ or ↑↓ to prove they aren’t robots. Among them, perhaps the two most visited sites in Wales, WalesOnline and the BBC.

Something that may have puzzled you is that an anonymous comment to these sites, badly written and expressing lunatic views on devolution, the Welsh language, or blaming laverbread for the decline in the nation’s morals, might quickly gather a dozen shows of support. Rest assured, there aren’t that many nutters out there, these are almost certainly computer generated.

Now that you know, why were you ever surprised that Trinity Mirror and the BritNat Bullshit Corporation should make it easy for the 77th Brigade and others to promote their anti-Welsh agenda? It would be very easy for them to use Captcha – as I do on this blog – to ensure that all comments and shows of support or disapproval were genuine, but they choose not to.

I have it on good authority that the all-conquering Swansea Labour Party is raring to go in May’s council elections. Well oiled, with palms greased and muscles flexed from Clydach High Street to Caswell Bay. Even as you read this leafleting teams – each member carrying a 90kg rucksack – will be training by racing up and down Kilvey Hill. Platitudes are being practised and – should honeyed words fail – brass knuckles polished.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate.

It is at this point I must apologise to whoever sent me interesting information about the line-up for May . . . information I’m afraid I’ve lost, sorry. The problem is that I’m still trying to get straight after my recent computer disaster. But never mind, I shall press on with what I’ve got.

It seems that things are not well for the bruvvers on my home patch, and even worse as we look around the Bay.

First, the Clays, Bob and Uta, have upped sticks and gone. They drifted into town a few years ago, he’s English and a former MP for Sunderland North, she’s Austrian. They were immediately accepted as candidates by the Labour Party, yet they’ve spent their brief time in the city playing left wing politics and plotting against ‘colleagues’, now they’re moving on having done sod all for Swansea, their only contribution being to keep up Labour numbers on the council.

One of those hoping to replace the Clays in the Llansamlet ward is Maureen ‘Mo’ Sykes, who has appeared in this blog afore, due to her connection with the YMCA. See here, here and here.

Like the Clays and so many of the city’s recent Labour councillors Sykes is not native to Swansea or to Wales. But what the hell! Labour is an internationalist party . . . or was until it realised that most Labour voters went for Brexit due to concerns over immigration. So if Labour don’t fall into line, then those voters will switch to Ukip (even if they remain sceptical about Paul Nuttall’s claim to have scored the winning goal in the 1966 World Cup Final).

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Plaid Cymru

‘But, surely’ you cry, ‘Plaid Cymru must be strong in Swansea, and putting up a raft of of inspiring candidates?’ I fear not. The last time the Jack electorate was offered credible Plaid candidates with whom they could identify was when me and my mates stood back in the ’60s and ’70s. You want to know why Plaid Cymru is almost invisible in Swansea?

First, there’s the widespread perception that Plaid is a ‘Cardiff party’. In other words, part of the ‘bubble’ that sees Cardiff get a disproportionate share of investment and everything else. This may be felt in other areas, but is more keenly felt in Cardiff’s only rival.

Second, and another reason that the party has difficulty connecting with ordinary people, is because of its obsession with ‘progressive’ politics and other bollocks that makes it hostage to single-issue obsessives and outright charlatans. Here’s an example.

Mynydd y Gwair

The long saga of Mynydd y Gwair is drawing to a close. A windfarm will soon rise on an unspoilt landscape on the edge of Swansea. Local graziers – all Welsh – will lose out to the German energy company erecting the turbines, and the Duke of Beaufort, who owns the land, much of it acquired in confiscations from Welsh landowners (among them, it is suggested, Owain Glyndŵr). Yet Plaid Cymru has done nothing to help the people of the area.

Plaid Cymru may indeed be ‘the Party of Wales’ but in its pathetic attempt to avoid the ‘narrow nationalist’ slander it refuses to acknowledge the existence of a distinct, Welsh people, promoting instead something called ‘civic nationalism’ which, when used by Plaid Cymru, is just a cop-out.

On Mynydd y Gwair, Plaid’s desperation to avoid the slander, coupled with its support for environmentalist shysters, has led the party to support a German energy company and an English aristocrat against Welsh people.

What sort of a national party is this? Perhaps one for which ‘Wales’ is just a geographical expression.

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Plod, Plod, Plodding Along

Before leaving Swansea I must return to the case of Jenny Lee Clarke who, you may remember, was a colleague of Carolyn Harris, now the MP for Swansea East, and claims to have suffered a homophobic assault at the hands of Harris. (An incident that Plaid Cymru, opposed to bullying and homophobia, chose to ignore.)

In what was almost certainly a tit-for-tat move Clarke was accused of stealing money by somehow paying herself more than she was due. I’m not sure when she was initially charged (lost documents again) but I know that she was bailed, and that this initial bail period was extended until November 7th . . . when it was extended again to February 17th . . . now it’s been extended again to May 17th.

. . . for Labour politicians?

If the police have a case then they should take it to court, if they don’t have a case then they should give this poor woman a break and put an end to her worrying. I cannot believe that it takes so long to investigate a single allegation against one woman – it’s not as if we’re dealing with a complicated conspiracy involving offshore accounts used by Russian hackers.

The way the police have treated Jenny Lee Clarke makes them look incompetent. An alternative explanation, seeing as the allegation against Clarke comes from a Labour MP, one against whom she had made a serious allegation, and remembering that the South Wales PCC, Alun Michael, is a former Labour MP, might be that political influence explains this woman’s appalling treatment.

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Comrades Lost on the Port Talbot Front

Around the Bay, in Neath Port Talbot, there has been internecine blood-letting on a scale unrecorded since the Peloponnesian War. The ground in Port Talbot is said to be red with the blood of fallen comrades, knives protruding from their backs, with as many as half of the sitting Labour councillors deselected, and perhaps eleven of them planning to stand as Independents in May. This could get really nasty. (Rubs hands gleefully!)

A similar situation is reported from Bridgend council, especially up around Maesteg, and from other areas such as Caerfilli, and Cardiff. It would appear that in some local authority areas ‘Welsh’ Labour is fighting a – largely unreported – civil war.

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Llandovery YMCA

Hesitantly now, I cross the mighty Llwchwr into Carmarthenshire, but give Sosban a wide berth, for Cneifiwr is doing a grand job there in exposing the manifest shortcomings of the oddballs, dissemblers and grotesques collectively known as Llanelli Labour Party. I shall instead hie me away to Llandovery.

Intelligence reached me that the con trick going by the name of Llandovery YMCA had closed its doors. I call it a con trick because its greatest achievement has been to pull in hundreds of thousands of pounds of public funding to create non-jobs for good-lifers. I suggest you read Ancestral Turf and The Impoverishment of Wales (scroll down to ‘YMCA Wales’). There you will encounter in a previous incarnation ‘Mo’ Sykes, would-be successor to the Clays.

put up on March 4th, still closed

Of more immediate relevance could be that the driving force behind this scam, one Jill Tatman, is being prevented from returning to work by other trustees after a period looking after her ‘sick’ husband. I’m told that her husband is not sick at all, but perhaps keeping his own company while on bail for – it is alleged – offences involving children.

A great deal of public money has been poured into Llandovery YMCA for the benefit of a small group of recent arrivals. Given that the whole project seems to have folded there should now be an investigation of the accounts and the wider running of this good-lifers’ benefit fund.

In my Ancestral Turf post you will see a video featuring Gill Wright who branched out by taking over the old North Western Hotel, near the railway station, to run as the Level Crossing bunkhouse. Public funding was secured, but again, the venture collapsed, after just two years.

The old pile has now been bought again, this time to be run as a commercial venture, with no public funding involved. How know I this? Because the new owners sent a message to the contact box you’ll see in the sidebar.

I get some very interesting messages through my ‘Contact Me Directly’ box. Oh yes.

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Sweet Charity

News from the north, now.

Over the years I’ve dealt with countless examples of the ‘Welsh’ Government blindly throwing money around in the vain hope that this will be mistaken for an economic strategy. As we know, much of this money goes to Labour Party members and hangers-on in the Third Sector; Naz Malik and the family business AWEMA being a classic example.

When it’s not going to Labourites other ways are found to squander public funding, such as showering money on the grant grabbers of Llandovery and their counterparts across the land. I’ve often thought that this group seems to make up for the lack of a Labour presence in rural areas.

For the electoral map tells us that there are fewer opportunities to reward party loyalty when we travel west of Wrecsam and Llanelli, or north of Merthyr. But little outposts of bruvverdom can still be found. One such example would be the patch of Councillor Siôn Wyn Jones in Bethel, a village to the north east of Caernarfon on the B4366.

Now I’m sure that one-time estate agent Siôn is a conscientious councillor working hard for his community, for he never tires of telling people how hard he works and how much money he’s raised for that community. But questions are being asked about his running of the village hall, Neuadd Goffa Bethel.

The revamped Neuadd is a fine asset for Bethel, but questions persist. Such as, why have no accounts or annual returns been filed with the Charity Commission for two years? And why is Siôn Wyn Jones the sole trustee of the Neuadd? Because the Charity Commission recommends at least three trustees. We know young Siôn is multi-talented, but is he serving as chairman, secretary and treasurer?

I’m sure there are simple answers to these questions and equally sure that Siôn Wyn Jones will ensure that everything is soon tickety-boo. For hark! I hear the returning officer call the candidates to the stage.

P.S. I should have mentioned that even though Gwynedd Council is controlled by Plaid Cymru the local funding agency, Mantell Gwynedd, is firmly under Labour Party control. Described to me as a “Labour closed shop”. Which means that even in an area where Labour is weak, ‘loyalty’ can still be bought and rewarded. An interesting insight into how ‘Welsh’ Labour manages to control the purse-strings even in those areas where it is rejected by the electorate.

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‘J Jones’

Those of us who spend too much time on the internet, and especially on sites that deal with Wales, will be familiar with ‘J Jones’, an exceptionally prolific writer whose mission in life seems to be proving that we’d all be eating caviare in the backs of our chauffeur-driven Rollers . . . if only we killed off the Welsh language.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I believe that ‘J Jones’ is our old friend, that son of the Balkans, Jacques Protic. I say that for a number of reasons. To begin with, over the years Protic has used many aliases, he may even have been Bilingo, for what really brings down the red mist for Protic is kids being taught Welsh, or worse, being educated through the medium of Welsh.

A further link is that ‘J Jones’ claims to be living on Ynys Môn, which, by a strange coincidence, is where Jacques Protic lives.

Until quite recently, Protic and ‘J Jones’ seemed to work as a team, appearing on the same blog or website feeding off each other. But we seem to be reading less from Protic nowadays and more from ‘J Jones’, who may be trying to explain the Protic reticence in the comment below, made in December to a Cardiff University blog by Professor Roger Scully.

‘J Jones’ of course shares the Protic obsession with education, to the extent that towards the end of 2015 he even commissioned a survey with YouGov into attitudes to Welsh language education. How much does it cost to have your own survey? How much of an obsessive do you have to be to arrange one? Or is someone else paying?

I suggest that newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites, take rather more care than hitherto when dealing with comments and other contributions from ‘J Jones’, if only because he doesn’t exist.

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Brexit

To finish, a little contribution from another source who tells me that Whitehall mandarins are in a tizzy because they fear May and her Three Brexiteers may be planning to do a runner so as to avoid the €60bn ‘divorce settlement’ and other punitive measures that Johnny Foreigner will seek to impose.

The scenario runs thus: Once the German elections are out of the way at the end of September a spat will be contrived that will see the UK raise two fingers to her erstwhile partners in the EU and walk away without paying anything.

I’m still trying to get my head around this, and figure out how it might impact on Scotland. Surely it would be a gift for the SNP? And what about us?

I’m sure my erudite and imaginative readers will have opinions on this and the other matters raised in this post.

There are many people who, quite frankly, hate us for being Welsh. We hear it regularly from smart-arse stand-ups and oh-so-clever calumnists. They can say and write things about us that would get them prosecuted if ‘Black’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Irish’, ‘Pakistani’ or any other group was substituted for ‘Welsh’. Most are thankfully outside of Wales, but there are some living among us.

This latter group doesn’t like Wales being in any way ‘different’ to England. They are not prepared to tolerate a separate, Welsh national identity, and the thought of any of us speaking a language other than English makes some of them apoplectic. (Especially when reminded, or informed, that Welsh was spoken in England long before English.) The people I’m describing won’t really be satisfied until every last vestige of a separate Welsh identity has disappeared.

Though I will concede that antipathy towards Welsh identity and traditions is something of which we ourselves have sometimes been guilty. Our own aristocracy and gentry couldn’t drop the ap and the ab quick enough once they were sure Harri Tudur was secure on the throne of the newly-minted Englandandwales. A few centuries later the rise of socialism, and especially the growth of the English-Irish Labour Party, saw Welshness again rejected, this time because it was ‘holding us back’. (From what exactly, was never adequately explained.)

Today, the anti-Welshness we experience is different because it cannot be explained by self-interest or warped political dogma; and it’s much less likely to come from within the Welsh nation itself. Which makes what we are experiencing today pure, naked racism.

To some extent it stems from what political analysts describe as a ‘growing sense of English identity’. Which need not be a bad thing when preached by, say, Billy Bragg; but Bragg’s interpretation of Englishness hardly resonates outside of folk clubs. Whereas what I’m thinking of – even without invoking the BNP or EDL – is rather intolerant and xenophobic. Expressed in its attitudes to ‘Europe’, immigration, ‘ungrateful’ Jocks and other villains . . . with foreign aid and further grievances being unearthed by politicians and media on an almost daily basis. In this scenario we Welsh are nothing but a bunch of sponging indigenous primitives to be ridiculed and despised. A bit like Aborigines, but with the saving grace that, being white, we can be anglicised and assimilated.

But of course none of this can be said openly (outside of the Daily Mail) which makes it very difficult for those who hate us for just being Welsh to express their true feelings. Nor do we provide a ‘hook’ on which they can hang their prejudices. For we have never attacked other nations. We have not in recent times waged guerilla warfare against England. We certainly don’t covet any far-off islands. We don’t commit more crimes than other groups. We are not religious zealots. And the smell of cawl being carried on the breeze shouldn’t offend anyone. Nor is there any reason to envy us, as the English envy the Germans for being richer, or the French for being more sophisticated. All of which gives a certain irony when standing up for what you are results in being called “an intolerant Welsh bastard” by Ukip supporters who fled Birmingham because they refused to live among other races and cultures.

Being unable to admit their ugly sentiments those I’m discussing must couch their hatred in what they hope sounds more rational language. They tell us they are opposed to further devolution, because it’s ‘too expensive’ . . . never because it gives power to a people they despise. Or they argue – on purely educational grounds, you understand – against the teaching of the Welsh language, or Welsh history, in our schools. Another favourite is the ‘waste of money’ on bilingualism – ‘cos we all speaks English, innit’. In fact anything distinctively Welsh is condemned as ‘divisive’ . . . whereas flying a flag that ignores Wales is, bizarrely, ‘inclusive’! And ninety-nine times out of a hundred it comes in the ‘package’. What’s the ‘package’? Well, just ask yourself, ‘How many people do I know who are rabidly hostile to the Welsh language but support greater devolution?’

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, or focusing too much on the realignment of identification taking place among the English, I shall broaden the scope of this opus to prove that Cymrophobia is a condition that can afflict individuals with roots far away, in lands of which we know little; belonging to nations with whom our fathers had no quarrel. Such a man is Jacques Protic. (Click to enlarge.)

Many of you may be unfamiliar with the name, but if you follow Welsh political blogs then you will have read his comments under a host of pseudonyms, ‘Jon Jones’, ‘Mo Patel’, etc. Once one is exposed another emerges. He also comments as Jacques Protic. The giveaway is that they often appear on the same post ‘supporting’ each other. On Twitter, Protic can – or could until recently – be found hiding behind a number of handles including: @gogwatch, @GLASNOSTORGUK, @cymnot, @Plaidodo (also used as an e-mail address), and@momopatel1960. This ‘Mo Patel’ Twitter account has now closed, but I’m told it started off using my gravatar with the eyes scratched out and the mouth taped over!There are almost certainly other identities. Though strangely, for a high-powered, international businessman, I can’t find a Twitter account in his own name.

(Protic thinks he’s been a clever boy recently by ‘naming’ me. Ooooo! Sorry, Jacques, but just about everybody knows I’m Royston Jones, originally from Swansea, now living near Tywyn.)

Protic is also, allegedly, the man behind the now defunct Gogwatch website and it is further suggested that he ran the Glasnost blog. Given his obsessive hatred for the teaching of Welsh (read this), there are many who believe that Protic was also BiLingo. Although not naming Proticthis blog establishes the link between BiLingo and Gogwatch. BiLingo caused a great deal of hurt to good people, dedicated teachers, through having its lies repeated by English newspapers.

These Twitter accounts, blogs, and handles claim to speak for “the silent majority”, giving the impression of an army of concerned parents ready to rise up to fight the oppressor forcing the Welsh language down the throats of their darling offspring. And yet . . . where are they? Do we ever see them protesting outside council offices or schools? Is there an organisation claiming to represent them (other than Gogwatch, Glasnost, BiLingo)? I don’t deny there may be a minority that would prefer their children weren’t reminded they are in Wales, but they’re not bothered enough to make a fuss about it. That is left to a tiny number of obsessives like Protic, a man so eaten up with hatred, and so detached from reality, that he may believe his countless pseudonyms are real people – maybe his fabled ‘majority’!

Not only does Protic sometimes write in his own name, he has even stood for election. In May this year he offered himself to the electors of the Aethwy ward on Ynys Mon as an Independent candidate . . . he gained 3% of the vote. (Click to enlarge.) Maybe we shouldn’t read too much into a single election, but given that his views on the Welsh language and associated issues would have been the only reason the voters would have heard of him, his share of the vote gives a fair indication of how much support his views really have, at least in that corner of the island. It indicates the yawning gulf between his imagined ‘majority’ and the cruel truth.

Protic and his kind are obviously objectionable, but shouldn’t be a problem to any proud and confident nation. But we Welsh are not a proud and confident nation. Which explains why there are many in Wales afraid to confront him and his odious kind. Arguing that we should ‘reach out’, ‘reason with them’, ‘engage them in dialogue’. Being reasonable with people who are only going to laugh at us and interpret our reasonableness as weakness is the mistake we’ve been making for the past few centuries, and look where it’s got us – a country poorer than Bulgaria, an Assembly run by English civil servants, and our people a minority in large areas of Wales . . . If we aren’t very careful we are going to be so damn ‘reasonable’ that we shall cease to exist.

Finally, and I was hoping to avoid this, but it has to be said – Protic is a Serb. Now many of you will know that over the years I have defended the Serbs against their many detractors, but I was never blind to the atrocities committed – by all sides – in the Balkan wars. So, tell us, Jacques; would a Croat, or an Albanian, or a Bosnian Muslim, have the freedom, in Serb-controlled territory, to mouth hatred of Serbs in the way that you spew out your hatred for us Welsh?

P.S. If I have wrongly attributed to Jacques Protic a website, blog, Twitter account, ‘handle’ or anything else, I will retract without hesitation if the person to whom it does belong can satisfactorily identify himself / herself.

It has been announced that the Children’s Commissioner for Wales will not be investigating the claims made by anonymous, anti-Welsh language website BiLingo. (While the website seems to be still open the Twitter account has closed.) There could have been no other decision. The real mystery is why the Commissioner ever took the slanderous and unfounded allegations seriously.

And yet, despite failing to persuade the Commissioner to get involved ‘BiLingo’ was a huge success. For the Children’s Commissioner wasn’t the real target at all, it was major English newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, both of which accepted the allegations and even embellished them! Which meant that BiLingo’s unfounded allegations reached millions of people. Just think about that. Add all the other anti-Welsh propaganda in the English media in recent months, including gems like Roger Lewis’ ‘Welsh Taliban‘ piece in the Daily Mail (though the term itself was quickly dropped from MailOnline) and appreciate what we’re up against.

In the run-up to the Scottish referendum in the autumn of 2014 we can expect more racist bullshit such as we’ve been subjected to in recent months. It might even get worse. My reason for saying that is as follows.

In the run-up to the referendum the eyes of the world will, increasingly, be on this island. With memories of the Irish Troubles still fresh, people from Trondheim to Tierra del Fuego will wonder why many Scots now want to break away from England. That the Scottish referendum is happening at all will reflect badly on England’s reputation and prestige around the world. Also, foreign journalists will simplify the debate into a Scots versus English thing; and the Scots have a head-start in the popularity battle: Great people – gave the world golf and whisky . . . red hair and kilts . . . Wully off The Simpsons . . . bagpipes . . . Scotty from Star Trek . . . Braveheart . . . never oppressed other countries . . . Making Scots instantly recognisable and popular; the English less so, for all sorts of reasons: attitudes to the EU, imperial legacy, even Hollywood casting so many English villains nowadays.

This being so, the last thing England needs in the autumn of 2014 is a third troublesome province. Because if that happened, governments and journalists around the world would really go to town. (Just imagine how it would rankle with London if the Chinese government accused England of treating its ‘minorities’ badly!) So we Welsh must be cowed into submission and silence. And it will be easy. As we saw before Christmas with BiLingo, and the attacks in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, we have no media to question and expose such slanders; certainly not to take on a London daily! Our political class is nothing more than a desperate collection of drunks, dilettantes and deadbeats. There is no extra-parliamentary opposition. So to all intents and purposes, we Welsh are defenceless. And silent. Which means we shall be ignored.

A great pity, because as I say, there will be journalists in Britain from all over the world looking for stories. They will soon realise there are three countries, and three administrations; which will, inevitably, lead them to ask about Wales. What answers will they get? If we leave it to the Welsh Management, or the Wales Office, or BBC West Anglia, they’ll get some cheesy, touristy image telling them that everything is just hunky-dory. So do we stay silent . . . or do we capitalise on this media attention to publicise the wreck that is Wales? Exposing the poverty, the deprivation, the colonisation, and all the other ills. I say it’s an opportunity too good to miss. Start preparing!